


The Incredible Adventures of One Too-Clever Human And Their Unfortunate Invention

by pikkugen



Category: Humans Are Space Orcs (Meme), Undisclosed Fandom
Genre: Canon-Typical Silliness, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27590657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pikkugen/pseuds/pikkugen
Summary: Humans are, indeed, Space Orcs - or at least have been. Some aspects of their Orcishness are more insidious than the others, namely, their penchant to use their boredom to make things...interesting.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Humans Are Space Orcs, Yuletide 2020





	The Incredible Adventures of One Too-Clever Human And Their Unfortunate Invention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elf (Elfwreck)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/gifts).



An Enseign, Engineering Section, on the Starfleet ship ESS Goblin was bored. That in and of itself was not unheard of, but undoubtedly both dangerous and dangerously productive, as it was often the case when the person in question was a Human. This particular human, Saadia Doumbe, was so bored that following a Universal Cleaning Unit on its erratic route along the rooms and corridors of the ship seemed like a worthwhile idea. The UCU, or a ”Space Roomba” as the humans seemed to want to call it, was your ordinary model of a self-propelling vacuum/washer: flat roundish shape, dull matte-grey color and one red blinking light, with a softly beeping sound unit that activated if it was close to a source of warmth, as most life-forms on the ship were exothermic. 

This particular unit had somehow broken its beeper, and the Ensign had discovered the fact as it had bumped on their leg quite annoyedly. The Ensign had moved their foot under the soft attack of the unit, apologized aloud, and then seemed to get the idea that was about to change everything in the course of the ship, the Fleet, and the Galactic Union, although nobody knew it at the time. 

They followed the unit as it returned to the dim recesses of the maintenance area, where it had its recharging and repairs dock. They watched it fit itself into its slot, blinking the red light the last time, and humming softly as the self-repair routine ran through it while the battery recharged. 

Ensign Doumbe watched carefully and tapped a few buttons just after a sequence of clicks. A query in binary appeared in the screen above the recharge dock, and they tapped a few buttons again, chuckling gleefully. Then they dug out an ordinary kitchen knife and a silvery roll of duct tape. 

After a few hours another Ensign jumped and swore loudly on his watch, rubbing an ankle and looking for the source of the stabbing pain. He saw a Space Roomba with a kitchen knife taped into it roll busily away, red light blinking but no beeps emitting in a space full of people. He saw it stab another person, a Communications Officer this time, and had to stifle a laugh quickly, as the Officer did the exact same thing as he had. By then the Roomba had disappeared behind a wall of legs, and the Ensign turned back on his work, still chuckling. 

When Ensign Doumbe heard about this incident, they sneaked back to the recharging dock with a permanent marker, and when the little Space Roomba rolled back in to recharge, they quickly drew on it the insignia of the Communications Officer the UCU had stabbed. Soon enough everyone on the ship knew about the UCU and greeted it politely – if they happened to notice it before it stabbed them in the ankle. 

One day Ensign Doumbe managed to see Captain Mergelyan get stabbed, but instead of getting angry, she leaned down (rubbing her ankle), took off her own insignia and ceremoniously taped it on the little machine, saluted it smartly, and carried out the meeting as usual. Ensign Doumbe had to appreciate such sense of humor. 

Captain UCU continued its seemingly random stabbings, but as the Very Official List of Stabbees grew on the noteboard (and many who had been stabbed made it their personal business to list their names and ranks themselves) it became clear that the UCU, which everyone was calling Stabby by now, seemed to have developed some kind of ambition and mostly only went for those who were at the higher end of the echelon. As when the Roftian Commodore Duruk'zher was visiting this deck on some business and Captain Stabby took a seemingly random turn and went for his ankle. Captain Stabby was at that point almost a month into its business of stabbing people, and might have been scrapped (the Commodore, like most Roftians, had no sense of humor) except most of the human staff hurried to its side and did some very fast talking to explain the phenomenon. 

Grudgingly the Commodore allowed Commodore Stabby to continue on its way, but he threatened to tell his superiors about the weird practice of the human staff. The human staff nodded straight-faced and apologized some more, but as soon as the Roftian turned his fanged head, someone added the Commodore's insignia to Stabby's back next to the well-worn duct tape holding the knife. 

That night at the mess there was some toasting, since the Commodore was the first non-human to have been Stabbyed. Some lower-ranking non-human members of the crew lamented of not having had the honor of getting Stabbyed, since Commodore Stabby most certainly wouldn't deign to approach them any more, but at least one did the proverbial yell-and-grasp-the-ankle the next day and changed color to pale lavender like xey had just been blessed. Maybe xey had. At least xeir people back home seemed to think so when xey called back to them, since on the next planetary stop xey found out that xey had been sent a whole box of blessing stones to touch and send back home to bring good luck. 

Unfortunately it seemed that Commodore Stabby was doomed to stay Commodore for the rest of the patrol cruise, because the highest-ups were all on the top deck (and, indeed, on other ships) and there was little chance that any of them would be careless enough to come to the lower level without sturdy, armored boots. So one boring night Ensign Doumbe found themself dabbling with the programming of Commodore Stabby again, and then they sneaked to the elevator giggling wildly but quietly, carrying something heavy-looking under one arm. 

By the next lunch-break Commodore Stabby had risen to the rank of Rear Admiral, to the great glee of the Engineering staff. Rear Admiral Smythe-Jones sent his personal regards to ”whoever clever bastard it was who let the bloody machine loose on the Command deck”, but wisely Ensign Doumbe didn't push themself forward and confess. They still had some misplaced dreams of rising through the ranks during this mission. 

As it happened, there was to be a festivity on board the ESS Goblin for some human reason, and all the human ships of the fleet sent their representatives for it. Some non-human ships that had more doings with Earth system sent a delegation, so the ship was bound to be teeming with high officials. At this point everyone had almost forgotten Rear Admiral Stabby, who was still roaming freely through the ship with its many times replaced knife duct-taped on it and the beeper still carefully muted. Stabbyings still happened, but those once Stabbyed had mostly learned to always keep a subconscious eye to the floor level and when a flashing red light appeared to their peripheral vision they just lifted a leg or took a few steps to the side, continuing their work as usual. Thus it was probably an understandable oversight that no-one remembered to inform those guests about the UCU stalking their ankles – and ranks.

The very next day the Vice Admiral Bankole was explained (very politely, for she was known of her sternness and temper) about Stabby, and while her large dark face was characteristically grumpy as the explanation carried on, it split into a ship-shaking laughter at the end and she gifted her own insignia to Vice Admiral Stabby in an ex tempore (but very official) ceremony a while later. It was recorded, of course, and spread thoroughout the Fleet as an exemplary way to encourage quick reflexes and vigilance (and camaraderie) in the long missions. The non-human wings of the Starfleet shrugged and carried on without applying the idea; humans and their odd ways were known but not always appreciated. But several human or mostly-human ships ran with the idea and created their own Stabbys, although none of them had the original Vice Admiral Stabby's standing or, indeed, the ambition. 

The Admiral of the ESS wing of the fleet was notably not a human; they were a Vordon, an energy being of a species supposedly transcendent at some point of their evolution. Despite this, Vice Admiral Stabby seemed adamant in gaining the rank of Admiral and turned out everywhere the Vordon floated. The festivity of Eurovision was a week-long affair of music, celebration and playful competition that very few remembered the origin of, but it was nevertheless an established part of the human year, so Vice Admiral Stabby had plenty of occasions to try to gain that one precious rank it was still missing. 

In an ancient ritual on the last day of the festivity every nation aboard was supposed to send a participant to the final competition of ”singing karaoke”, and as the sole representative of the Vordons, Admiral Kaliish graciously floated on the dais to perform an ancient hymn of Toxic by Britnispears. Their insubstantial, eerie voice captured the ancient hymn touchingly until the point it cut away in a screech. Vice Admiral Stabby had managed to poke its knife somewhere in the glowing plasm of the Vordon. 

The mess hall full of humans froze. No one had believed anything could even touch a Vordon, they were transsubstantial after all, and it was inconceivable that the plasm or whatever they consisted of would take any damage – or, indeed, feel pain. Someone killed the whining of the background tape, and slowly people gravitated towards the dais where the plasm that was usually Vordon-shaped had formed a tight, ultraviolet ball. Admiral Stabby kept vacuuming and washing the dais as if nothing had happened. 

”A-admiral Kaliish?” asked the nervous aide who was supposed to be at the Vordon's side at all times, grasping her ceremonial clipboard to her chest. ”Is there a doctor here?” she turned to call with panic rising in her voice, forgetting promptly that any doctor available would probably not be specialized in transsubstantial life-forms. Her long green braids swished from side to side as she was trying to keep an eye on both the Admiral, the UCU and the still-captive, terrified audience. 

After what seemed an eternity, the ultraviolet ball of plasm unfurled slowly into the white, aetheric shape of the Vordon. Admiral Kaliish took a long look around the mess hall and all the petrified, terrorized faces around them. They looked down until they saw the UCU with the kitchen knife duct-taped on it, with the insignia of the Vice Admiral still attached on it despite its sudden and unexpected rise in rank, and then again at the humans. 

Admiral Kaliish shook their, well, head – the Vordons tended to assume the general shape and the body language of the people they were interacting with – and found their insubstantial voice again. 

”All you corporeals! You're crazy!” they screamed and disappeared from the plane of matter as we know it. Their insignia and all the other trappings of their Starfleet office clattered down, and through a small insignificant stroke of luck, the insignia dropped on top of Admiral Stabby, who, having achieved what it had come for, scooted off to hoard its new rank in peace (and probably doing the electric equivalent of evil hand rub and belly laugh). 

The aide to former Admiral Kaliish burst into tears and ran off the mess hall. The Vice Admiral Bankole, the highest in rank in the room, took charge and quickly dispersed the congregation, and collected a handful of eye-witnesses to write a missive to the Galactic Union's government about the sudden disappearance of the Admiral. 

The music festival had ended on a somewhat sour note, but it was nothing compared to what was to come. It appeared that most branches of the Galactic Union, along with the Starfleet and all the major branches of economy and government, had been led by the Vordons, and following Admiral Kaliish to another plane of existence they all had disappeared. Hasty and panicked but still thorough investigations proved that all the Vordons were, in fact, facets of the same being, and thus the whole governmental system was actually built on dictatorship and monopoly. The whole Union shook and swayed in its joints, threatening to pull itself apart and push the entire Galaxy into chaos. 

At this point most planetary systems turned their blaming fingers, or tentacles, or whatever they used for pointing, towards humans and especially their heinous instrument, Admiral Stabby, and its unknown creator. The ESS wing, with its stout and tenacious lead personified in Vice Admiral Bankole, stood firm and claimed that if everyone had followed their example and trained their personnel to always expect the unexpected and beware the small details, the Galaxy wouldn't be in this state. This lead to some sabre-rattling and a few not-so-empty threats, until the Vice Admiral lost her famous temper and yelled at the universe in general that humans had fought and won against impossible odds before. Had everyone forgotten what it was like before they had been accepted to the Galactic Union out of fear that they'd take the galaxy down with them in one spectacular starblast? It could be done again, did they hear her? 

And they did hear, and they did remember. After a few very diplomatic and placating and acquiescent emergency conferences with the Human ambassadors, most of the rest of the Galaxy took back what they had said about Admiral Stabby, appointed it the President of the Galaxy with the appropriate insignia applied to its chassis next to the duct-taped knife, turned to rebuilding the system again (with less power to any one species, especially humans) and thought they had got off lightly, all things considered, and wasn't it good to find out the truth about those pretentious transcendents? 

And deep in the dim recesses of the maintenance area in Starfleet ship ESS Goblin a frightened Ensign Doumbe sat hugging their knees next to a UCU repairs docks, where the President of the Galaxy was recharging and humming softly, and swore that boredom was the most blessed of all states of man, as long as it didn't lead to any potentially hazardous inventions. 

When they finally stopped shivering, they staggered back up and stumbled towards the break room, where the coffee maker was bubbling softly. They poured themself a cup and drank it, staring with unseeing eyes at the coffee maker. Then something in it seemed to rouse their attention.

Hmmm.


End file.
